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"Rebel Mothers" challenges the stifling institution of modern motherhood and reclaims mothering as an act of liberation. Each episode we’ll explore the struggles and expectations mothers face in a world built to exploit them, unveil the systematic institutions that create these challenges, and develop strategies for dismantling these oppressive systems. We'll shed light on the intersectionality of motherhood, addressing the unique struggles faced by women of diverse backgrounds. And we’ll hear inspiring stories of fearless women who are redefining the narrative of motherhood.
Hello! Welcome to another special episode of Rebel Mothers, where we take a deep dive into the life of a real Rebel Mother. Today we’re talking about another remarkable woman in history who defied societal norms and truly helped change the world - Jenny Marx. Jenny is, of course, the wife of philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist, Karl Marx, best known for writing Capital and The Communist Manifesto, and the father of the political philosophy and economic theory known as Marxism. Learning about the man behind Marxism was enlightening, but even more so was learning about the woman who helped shape him and his ideas that changed the world.
Much of the content for today’s episode came from the book Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution, by Mary Gabriel which is a thoroughly comprehensive look at the story of Karl and Jenny’s life together.
Today we’re going to talk about Karl’s wife, Jenny, an intellectual in her own right and the mother of seven children, although only three daughters survived childhood. Here was a woman so deeply committed to the socialist ideals of Karl Marx that she abandoned her life as an aristocrat, and they spent much of their life in poverty and exile. Like many women who lived in the 19th century, her life story is not a happy one, although by all accounts, Karl and Jenny remained in love, despite many personal tragedies.
So let's learn a little more about her, shall we?
Early life
Jenny von Westphalen was born in a small Northern German town on February 12, 1814. At the time, women’s status was determined by how eligible and desirable they were for marriage, and according to Mary Gabriel, who wrote the book Love and Capital, quote “it was generally agreed there was no one who combined such rare beauty with such a vibrant wit and intellect, as well as a respectably high social standing among the local aristocracy.” end quote. Early on Jenny showed signs of intelligence and a streak of rebellion - she was engaged at the age of 17 but within a few months defied all social convention by breaking that engagement.
Her father, Ludwig von Westphalen encouraged Jenny to study Romanticism, which would have been appealing as the movement declared equal rights for women. He was also an admirer of French socialism, which would inspire Jenny for the rest of her life. Ludwig believed society had a responsibility to alleviate suffering, and one of his early pupils was the son of one of his colleagues, a teenager named Karl Marx.
Jenny’s brother Edgar von Westphalen was a schoolmate and friend of Karl Marx, and Jenny and Karl knew each other as children. She was four years older than Karl. They became close friends as teenagers as he came over often to take walks and discuss philosophy, socialism, and English literature with her father. Both Jenny and Karl were well-read and literary, and they soon began courting.
According to Marx, she was the most beautiful girl in the town of Trier. Jenny and Karl became secretly engaged in 1836, just before Karl left to study law, history, and philosophy at German universities. Jenny was afraid her parents would disapprove of their differing social classes. They continued their relationship for years, and in July of 1841, met for a rendezvous where they, ahem, consummated their relationship. This was incredibly dangerous and risky for a young woman of the time, but Jenny wrote to Karl afterward: quote “I can feel no regret. When I shut my eyes very tightly, I can see your blessed smiling eyes…then I myself am happy with the knowledge that I have been everything to you - and can be nothing to others. Oh karl, i know very well what I have done and how the world would outlaw me, i know all, all of that, and still I am happy and overjoyed and would not give up even the memory of those dear hours for any riches in the world.” end quote
Finally, after seven long years, Karl and Jenny married in June of 1843. During their euphoric honeymoon trip, they spent all their money they had been gifted. This would be a pattern they would follow for decades - the irony of Marx spending his life writing about economics is that he was incredibly irresponsible about his own finances. The young couple moved to Paris, where Jenny became immersed in the intellectual and revolutionary circles of the time, and Marx met Friedrich Engels, beginning a lifelong friendship and collaboration.
Jenny Marx
In the spring of 1844, Jenny gave birth to their first child, Jenny Caroline. They called her Little Jenny, or Jennychen. Neither one of the new parents really knew what they were doing - quote, “Jenny had been raised in a house full of servants, where Children were handed over to nurses as soon as they were born. And Marx was so disengaged from his family that he had long behaved as though he were an only child.” Little Jennychen became ill early on and Jenny decided to take her back to her own mother in Trier a month after she was born, leaving Karl in Paris
That summer, while alone in Paris, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. The work is best known for its argument that the conditions of modern industrial societies result in the estrangement (or alienation) of wage-workers from their own products, from their own work, and in turn from themselves and from each other. Marx argued that workers are forced by the capitalist productive process to work solely to satisfy their basic needs. As such, they merely exist as commodities in a constant state of drudgery, evaluated solely by their monetary value, with capital assuming the status of a good in and of itself.
Jenny returned to Paris in late 1844, but only a few months later, in February 1845, the Marx family was expelled from Paris for his political writings. This was the beginning of a lifetime of writing fiery critiques that got him scrutinized by the government. Karl moved first to Brussels while Jenny stayed behind with her eight-month-old daughter and a wet nurse. In order to stay in Belgium, Karl had to promise not to write anything about contemporary politics.
However, in short order their home became the center of socialist activity. Fredrich Engels moved to Brussels and bought the house next door to the Marx’s, finally meeting Jenny for the first time. Engels and Marx traveled to England where Marx was horrified by the conditions he witnessed. Up till then he’d spent his life as a middle-class intellectual married to an aristocrat, this was truly his first experience witnessing the poverty of the working class first hand.
Let’s back up a bit and place them in a global historical context - the American and French Revolutions had happened only about 50-70 years earlier. The social structure that had existed for hundreds of years in Europe, where the divine right of kings went unchallenged, was starting to unravel. Bad grain harvests and a potato blight spread across the continent and hundreds of thousands of people were starving. Many who had the money emigrated to the United States, but most people could only abandon their farms and fields and try to find work in urban cities. Industry was booming and small, artisan craftsmen were replaced by profit-hungry manufacturers who could cut costs and build large factories to manufacture and ship goods all around the continent. The new factories that were popping up created jobs, but not enough, and most of them went to women and children who could be hired for a fraction of the cost of men. Millions lived in misery; voiceless, powerless, illiterate and leaderless.
Family life was bleak - quote “Mothers who had to work but had no one to care for their youngest children gave the infants opium to keep them sedated until they returned. Girls as young as twelve were “married” off to ease the family’s financial burden, and boys as young as six began their lives on the street for the same reason. Fathers who had once enjoyed the dignity of supporting their loved ones now competed against their teenage sons for work that earned them a pittance.” end quote
Ok, so returning to the Marxes. In 1845, Jenny discovered she was pregnant again, and her mother sent a housemaid, Helene Demuth, to help Jenny care for her baby while expecting another on the way. Remember Helene, she’ll come back in this story.
Then, again, exile. Marx had been writing for a politically active newspaper and the Prussian King didn’t like what he was saying, so the French government shut him down and the political police told them they had 30 days to leave the country. They decided to emigrate to Brussels, and in September of 1845, Jenny gave birth to their second child, Laura Marx in Belgium.
How did Jenny fare during all this turbulence? From Love and Capital, quote “since their marriage Jenny had suffered financial insecurity and the inconvenience of forced exile. She had been distressed by the serious illness of her infant daughter and the political persecution of her husband, and yet she seemed remarkably untouched by it all…one has the sense that at this point she saw herself as part of a socially aware, politically active bohemian crowd - young and experimenting, their futures uncertain but without question bright. It was a thrilling environment for a woman of intelligence and convictions. There is no doubt she was committed to her husband’s ideas, but her letters are less clear on whether she recognized that she was moving inexorably away from the protected world she was raised in and into a political and social maelstrom” end quote
The Marxes lived in Brussels for three years. In 1847 Jenny birthed their third child, this time a boy, Edgar Marx.
While living in Brussels, Karl Marx continued his association with the secret radical organization called the League of the Just. Marx thought the League was the kind of organization that was needed to spur the working class of Europe toward the mass movement that would bring about a working-class revolution. The League of the Just reorganized as a political party called the Communist League that appealed to the working classes. In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most famous work – a programme of action for the Communist League. Written jointly by Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, The Communist Manifesto was first published on 21 February 1848.
Quote “Jenny worked as his secretary to help speed the project. Their handwriting intertwined on the page as he scribbled his thoughts on paper and she followed in an elegant, feminine hand, patiently copying out and making legible her husband’s blistering indictment of the bourgeoisie and this belief that revolution was right, inevitable, and imminent.” end quote
During this time, Europe experienced a series of protests, rebellions, and often violent upheavals that became known as the Revolutions of 1848. The Belgian Ministry of Justice accused Marx of arming Belgian workers who were planning revolutionary action, although these allegations are disputed. In March, only one month after the publication of the Communist Manifesto, the Brussels police detained Jenny and arrested Marx, serving him a deportation order. Jenny quote “scrambled to pack up their family and leave town before they were forcibly escorted across that border. Jenny gathered all their belongings and the only thing of value still left, her silver plate, which she put in a borrowed suitcase.” end quote. Karl, Jenny, and their three children traveled to France to be in the heart of the revolution.
In Paris, Marx started the publication of a daily political newspaper, which he helped to finance through his recent inheritance from his father. Marx and the other revolutionary socialists were regularly harassed by the police and Marx was brought to trial on several occasions, facing various allegations including insulting the Chief Public Prosecutor, committing a press misdemeanor and inciting armed rebellion through tax boycotting, although each time he was acquitted. Eventually his paper was banned, and the Marx family was again told they needed to leave the country.
Let’s check in with Jenny at this time, now it’s 1849. She’d finally returned to Paris, the city where she’d lived as a newlywed and by all accounts loved. She discovered she was pregnant with their fourth child while her husband was running a dangerous political paper and was continually harassed and arrested by the police. Now, for the fourth time in four years, she was being forced out of another country. They were completely broke, Marx having spent his entire inheritance and gone into debt to continue publishing his paper. Marx wrote letters to a variety of friends and peers asking for financial help, and he moved ahead of his family to London, England.
So the brilliant future Jenny had wanted for her family in Paris was abruptly gone. Now she needed to follow her husband to England, a cold, wet country she did not know. She took the two-day journey across the channel from France to England while seven months pregnant at the age of thirty-five, traveling with her three children aged five, three, and two. Quote from Love and Capital - Drenched, cold, weakened by seasickness, and exhausted from caring for the children (who were equally wet, cold, and sick), she finally traveled up the Thames by steamer in the expectation that she would soon join her husband. Marx, however, was not at the dock when they arrived. Laid up with what he described as a choleralike illness, he instead sent his poet friend Georg Weerth to retrieve his family….It is not difficult to imagine Jenny's utter desolation as she sat in their small room, with its inadequate coal fire, pondering the future. Once again she had been wrenched from Paris - luminous, opulent, and gay - and dropped into a city she did not know and whose language she barely understood.” end quote
England had not improved since Marx’s visit years earlier. Nothing in Jenny's experience could have prepared her for the filth, noise, and misery she found in this, the biggest and richest city in the most industrialized nation in the world. This is the year Dickens’ David Copperfield was published, and Dickens wrote often of the terrible conditions of Victorian England. Disease ran rampant because many people were drinking the water into which sewage was dumped. Machinery in factories proved to be very dangerous in itself, and there was obviously no health insurance to cover those who were unfortunate enough to get into an accident.
In November of 1849, Jenny birthed their fourth child, a boy named Henrich Guido Marx. From the start he was unwell. They couldn’t afford a wet nurse, so Jenny tried to nurse him herself but he was in constant pain. The Marx family still hadn’t found financial or housing security. When their new infant was six months old, they were evicted from their home and were unable to find new lodgings with four small children in tow. They moved from hotel to hotel until Jeny’s mother gave them enough money to rent two small rooms. As bleak as Jenny’s life was now, it was about to get even worse on a deeply personal level.
Betrayal & Despair
During the summer of 1850, Jenny, who was pregnant AGAIN with their 5th child, traveled to Holland to beg money from family. And while she was in Holland humiliating herself, Marx was enjoying the company of their old friend and housekeeper, Helene Dumuth. Jenny returned only to discover a few months later that Helene was pregnant.
In November of 1850, their baby son, Henrich Guido, died shortly after his first birthday. Jenny was broken-hearted. During all their moves and financial uncertainties, their young children had kept them cheerful and in good spirits, and she took the blame for his death since she had nursed him herself. The Marxes bought a tiny coffin and he was buried at a small cemetery nearby, one of many children who died young at the time. This is a great line from Love and Capital, quote “they were merely one among a multitude of beleaguered families gripped in the maw of poverty while a few streets away fortunate others flourished amid incalculable wealth.” end quote
Spring of the next year brought a new baby, the Marxes' fifth child and third daughter, Jenny Eveline Frances, nicknamed "Franziska”. A month later, Marx traveled to visit Engels and discuss the matter of Helene with him, leaving Jenny and Helene at home. Helene was pregnant and Jenny had just given birth, and the situation must have been deeply uncomfortable for both of them. These two women had been close since they were children. When Marx returned, Engels had agreed to say he was the father of Helene’s child, since he quote “cared not a whit about his reputation, especially with regard to women.” end quote.
No letter has survived, if one ever existed, in which Marx admitted he was the father of her child.
What did Jenny think? The only reference she ever made to the pregnancy was cryptic. In her memoirs she wrote: quote “in the early summer 1851 an event occurred which I do not wish to relate here in detail, although it greatly contributed to increase our worries, both personal and other.”
Late that summer, Helene Demuth gave birth to a boy, Henry Frederick Demuth. She listed herself as the mother on the birth certificate, but left the name of the father blank. In August, she gave the care of her son over to a foster family, and Helene remained with Jenny and Karl.
In 1852, Jenny and Karl’s youngest child, little baby girl Franziska, died just after her first birthday. It was relatively common in Victorian England for children to die young; an estimated 15 percent died before they had turned one, but that harsh statistic was no comfort to anguished parents, and certainly not to Jenny, whose sorrow was compounded by their poverty. The family did not even have the money to buy Franziska a coffin. She wrote in her memoirs, quote “our three living children lay down by us and we all wept for the little angel whose living, lifeless body was in the next room.” end quote. Eventually a neighbor took pity and gave them a couple pounds to bury their child.
Jenny suffered the pain of her loss, and the guilt that they may have been able to save Franziska and Henrich had they lived a life that offered their children the basic comforts they deserved. But because of their commitment to the cause and their life of poverty, the whole family was often sick from malnutrition.
In 1854 Jenny discovered she was pregnant again, at the age of forty. It must have seemed like a curse. They had lost their last two children to illness, and their doctor had just sent a bill for twenty-six pounds for caring for the family over the winter and demanded regular payments or he would stop treating them. Their sixth child, Jenny Julia Eleanor Marx, was born in the early winter of 1855 and was weak and sick from the beginning. Additionally, their eight-year-old son Edgar, who Jenny called her pride and joy, her angel, her heart’s darling, fell ill around this time. He died on April 6 at the age of eight from a form of tuberculosis, a disease not uncommon but made worse by poor nutrition and unhealthy living conditions. From Love and Capital, quote “no parent under similar circumstances could help but question what might have been done to change the tragic coutcome, and we can have no doubt that Marx and Jenny did so as well. There is also no doubt that this descent into the darkest corner of their souls could have led them to only one conclusion - the revolutionary path they had chosen had killed him. This was the third child Jenny and Marx had lost, but his death was so much more profound. Jenny confessed that the day of his passing was the most dreadful in her life, worse than all her previous pain and suffering combined.”
Marx feared Jenny wouldn’t survive this latest tragedy. For the next two years she spent much of it traveling to see friends and family, unable to bear living in the same house where her babies had died. But she and Karl remained steadfastly in love. During a separation from Karl in 1856, on their thirtieth wedding anniversary, Karl wrote to Jenny:
“My love for you, as soon as you are away from me, appears for what it is, a giant, and into it all the vigor of my mind and all the ardor of my heart are compressed…There you are before me, large as life, and I lift you up into my arms and I kiss you all over from top to toe, and I fall on my knees before you and cry: ‘madame, I love you.” and love you I do…you will smile, my dear heart, and wonder “why this rhetoric all of a sudden?” But if I could press your sweet white bosom to mine, I would be silent and not say a word.”
For a short time they settled into relative ease. They received a few inheritances from various family members, and they weren’t being exiled or harassed by the police any more. But by 1857, all the money had run out, and Marx had failed to publish several of his intended writings, and the family once again found themselves completely broke and desperate. Marx wrote to his friend Engels, who agreed to send him 5 pounds per month. Friedrich Engels came from money, and despite his revolutionary ideals, his father continued to provide him with a comfortable lifestyle, from which Friedrich was able to support Karl and his family. And then, yet again, Jenny discovered she was pregnant for the seventh and final time, at the age of forty-three. Sadly, she gave birth to a son who died within the hour and was buried unnamed. Jenny now had more children who had died than lived.
Meanwhile the world moved along, and Marx continued to press forward. He remained optimistic about the success of his ideas. Jenny remained committed but was a bit more realistic - although she never doubted his genius or the ideas themselves, she did doubt their reception. She continued to encourage him to keep writing, always hoping that the next work would be an explosive success. They’d just witnessed Charles Darwin’s immediate rise to success with his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and Jenny, Karl and Engels felt sure Marx was on the edge of something just as spectacular.
In 1859, Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, his first serious critique of political economy. This work was intended merely as a preview of his three-volume Das Kapital (known in English as Capital: Critique of Political Economy), which he intended to publish at a later date. The work was enthusiastically received, and the edition sold out quickly. The successful sales encouraged Marx, and in 1867 he finally published Das Kapital: Volume One, a work which, among many other things, proposes that the driving force of capital is in the exploitation of labor, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value. And who copied the entirety of this magnum opus? You got it, Jenny Marx.
The public was somewhat…disinterested. Sales were initially flat, and this utterly defeated Jenny. Marx’s masterpiece, the work that he had spent decades developing, had finally been published and was virtually unnoticed. Was it worth it? Years of poverty, the whole family suffering illnesses, babies dying? By all accounts she loved and supported Karl for the rest of her life, but during this period she became more independent, traveling and spending time with friends.
During this time, Jenny’s three daughters began supporting Karl in his work, acting as his secretaries, transcribing ideas and maintaining correspondence. In 1868, their oldest daughter, at the age of 24, accepted a position as a French language teacher in order to help her parents financially. She also contributed a number of articles to the socialist press, writing under the pen name "J. Williams" on the treatment of the Irish political prisoners by the British government. Their second daughter, Laura, married a young French socialist Paul Lafargue that same year. The couple spent several decades in political work together, translating Karl Marx's work into French, and spreading Marxism both in France and Spain. Their youngest daughter, Eleanor, was often playing in Marx’s study while he wrote Das Kapital. At the age of sixteen, Eleanor became her father's secretary and accompanied him around the world to socialist conferences, and as an adult she became involved in translating and editing volumes of his work.
Jenny Marx lived to see her daughters marry and become mothers themselves. Most of Jenny Marx's final years, however, were spent in bed with liver cancer, nursed by her youngest daughter Eleanor and her faithful housekeeper Helene Demuth.
And, at the very end of her life, she was able to see some of their ideals realized. The divine right of kings had crumbled, and the exploited masses of workers now formed part of the government. And finally, finally, Capital, the masterpiece that she and Karl had worked on, was beginning to gain recognition. Two days before her death, Marx excitedly read her the first independent article in English praising Capital. Jenny was thrilled at the recognition of her husband’s genius.
She died at the age of 67 on December 2, 1881.
Marx was too sick himself to attend her funeral, so Engels read the following eulogy:
The contribution made by this woman, with such a sharp critical intelligence, with such political tact, a character of such energy and passion, with such dedication to her comrades in the struggle - her contribution to the movement over almost forty years has not become public knowledge; it is not inscribed in the annals of the contemporary press. It is something one must have experienced first hand…we will have occasion enough to miss her bold and wise advice, bold without ostentation, wise without ever compromising her honor to even the smallest degree.
Karl Marx only lived about a year after Jenny passed when he died on March 14, 1883. The two are buried together in Highgate Cemetery in London.
Jenny von Westphalen left behind an aristocratic heritage to join her husband Karl Marx in a lifelong commitment to the emancipation of the working class and the abolition of capitalism. She threw her whole being into the socialist cause, as a financial manager, organizational secretary, scribe and critic.
Her daughter Eleanor wrote that without the aid of Jenny Marx her father, the founder of modern communism, would never have accomplished what he did. In addition to raising their surviving children, and keeping house, she was his constant companion, advisor and assistant. Jenny Marx's legacy reminds us of the often invisible contributions of women in the struggle for social justice and serves as an inspiration for future generations of activists and mothers.